PARLIAMENT HOUSE.The Australian parliament recently spent one billion
dollars on a building to house itself. I would have liked to vote
on whether we spent that billion that way. Given the chance I would
vote
to sell it to someone. Failing that, make it a public museum or
library
for ordinary people & send the politicians back to old parliament
house.

INDONESIAN TREATY.I would have liked to have had a chance to not ratify
that treaty. I REALLY hated a treaty being made on my behalf but
in secret from me. I thought that in democracies we elected
representatives,
not rulers. I REALLY resent a treaty on my behalf with that pretend
democracy.

RIGHT TO SILENCE.The Northern Territory governor has recently threatened
to legislate away the right to silence. From then on anybody from the
NT
who did not give an explanation to an arresting officer would find that
their defense had been compromised.

POLITICIAN'S SUPERANNUATIONIn mid December 1997 at a few minutes after midnight
on the last sitting day of 1997 the NSW State Government Parliament
passed
a law that increased parliamentarian's superannuation by about 30%.After eight years service Australian parliamentarians
already get an indexed pension for life. That CPI indexed pension
pays nearly the same money as their very generous parliamentary
salary.
Our selfless parliamentarians increased their pension by passing a
small
amendment that added their electoral spending allowance to their
parliamentary
salary for the purpose of calculating pension.When they were sprung, explanations seemed to follow
the line: "Gee whizz, we didn't realize that we were being that
generous
to ourselves!". After the federal travel allowance rorts of
last June, perhaps we the Australian taxpayers should learn & seek
ways to remove temptation from parliamentarians. Maybe we should
fix their salary including electoral travel allowance at twice or three
times the average weekly wage? Perhaps we should ask them to take
the same superannuation that their laws make us take? Perhaps it
is time that we in Australia followed the example of the people of the
USA, where the XXVIIth constitutional Amendment reads:

No law varying the compensation for the
services
of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election
of Representatives shall have intervened.

PRIME MINISTERIAL RORTS.Some retired Australian prime ministers seem to have
very cosy financial relationships with some of the incumbent regional
dictators.
Often the said dictators rule repressive and corrupt regimes (like
Indonesia
& China) which the Australian government perhaps should have
condemned
for civil rights breaches during said prime ministerial tenure.
Am
I unreasonable in thinking that these relationships are improper?